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In many organizations (e.g., higher education, non-profits, small companies), individuals are called upon to lead small groups of people to complete one or more tasks both in formal roles and in informal settings. For example, department heads, committee chairs, project leads, and program managers are all roles that require an individual to utilize leadership skills to lead their team to the successful completion of the tasks at hand. However, in many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and their associated jobs, training and support in leadership development are often lacking. To meet this need, the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators (ISEE) at the University of California - Santa Cruz (UCSC) made supporting and mentoring leadership development a key component of the Professional Development Program (PDP) for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in STEM, which ran for over 20 years. Building off of the ISEE leadership development model (ISEE 2020), this workshop is designed to give professionals an opportunity to learn about and practice important leadership skills that can be used in their organizations. In this workshop, participants learn to apply three elements of effective leadership that are useful in practice and inclusive of multiple perspectives on leadership. Participants apply actionable leadership practices to their own challenges at work and develop the language to discuss their own leadership skills. Workshop duration: 15 minutes individual reading, 2 hours in-person workshop, 15 minutes follow up. 

A significant focus of the ISEE Professional Development Program (PDP) is identifying authentic STEM practices, so that educators and scientists can develop and assess these practices as intentionally as they would scientific content knowledge. In addition to the classic inquiry-based learning activities, PDP alumni also find themselves using and teaching these STEM practices in other contexts. Many PDP participants have benefited from recognizing "STEM practices" as its own category of specific skills and knowledge, allowing them to build these practices into their work intentionally, rather than simply expecting these skills to develop naturally as a by-product of learning STEM content. We present four instances where PDP lessons have been put to work by alumni of the program in this manner, either in teaching and mentoring students, performing real-world scientific research, or both. First, we consider two instances of alumni using their PDP training to inform the way they build authentic STEM practices into college classrooms and college mentorship, at the College of St. Scholastica and at UC Santa Cruz. Next, we describe a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in which students learn and employ authentic STEM research practices at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Finally, we present an example of an alumna who has used her identification of widely-applicable STEM practices to broaden her own research horizons at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Classification is a general tool of science; it is used to sort and categorize biological organisms, chemical elements, astronomical objects, and many other things. In scientific classification, taxonomy often reflects shared physical properties that, in turn, may indicate shared origins and/or evolution. A “hands-on” galaxy-classification activity developed and implemented by Professional Development Program (PDP) participants, for a high-school summer STEM enrichment program, has been adopted for various age groups and venues, from young (K–3) to college students. We detail the basic tools required, outline the general activity, and describe the modifications to the activity based on learners’ ages and learning objectives. We describe the facilitation strategies learned through PDP training and used when implementing the activity, including prompts to motivate the students. We also discuss how we connected the classification process to astronomy and science more broadly during the concluding remarks. 

The Professional Development Program (PDP) was a highly impactful and innovative program that was run by the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators for twenty years, from 2001–2020. The program trained early-career scientists and engineers to teach effectively and inclusively, while also developing participants’ skills in leadership, collaboration, and teamwork. In this paper, we summarize important aspects of the PDP and some of the program’s major outcomes, describe legacies of the program, and share recommendations based on two decades of experience. A large section of this paper details aspects of the PDP that we consider essential to the program but that might not be apparent from other documentation of the program. Recommendations for others interested in professional development of STEM graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are: 1) invest in establishing program culture; 2) prepare participants pursuing all STEM career paths for inclusive teaching; 3) focus on teaching and learning authentic STEM practices of participants’ fields; 4) provide authentic and challenging contexts for practicing professional skills; 5) model all aspects of what participants are expected to do; and 6) provide opportunities for growth and becoming a collaborator within the community.